KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
The president of Comfort Keepers Home Care Santa Clarita is warning local seniors — and the entire SCV community — not to fall victim to a new phone scam where alleged thieves pose as Southern California Edison officials in order to get credit card information.
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When Myles McNamara was recently told by one of his employees that an Edison worker was on the phone saying that their power would be cut within 30 minutes for non-payment of their bill, he knew something wasn’t right.
“I went, ‘Hmm, that’s interesting — because I have it on automatic payment,’” McNamara recalled.
He took the call to find out more, and was told by a man named Jose that there was a work order to disconnect the power at Comfort Keepers Home Care for non-payment.
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As Jose talked, McNamara noted he was pulling up his account on the official Southern California Edison website, which stated that his recent payment cleared and his account was current.
When McNamara pointed this out, Jose apologized for the misunderstanding and asked him to call another phone number to get the matter cleared up.
“The scammers out there have become so good,” McNamara said. “I called it (and) I get the own hold music from Edison, I get the ‘Thank you for calling Southern California Edison’ — everything was as it should be.”
When a second man named John came onto the line, he recommended McNamara go ahead and pay the bill now via credit card, and any overpayment would be credited toward a future bill once the error was fixed.
“I just started laughing,” McNamara said. “I said, ‘John, do you really have people that fall for this?’ I said, ‘This is Scam 101 — are you kidding me?’”
John went on to argue that what McNamara was seeing on the website must be a glitch, and insisted he was only trying to ensure Comfort Keepers Home Care didn’t have any power interruptions due to the non-payment his internal system was showing.
“He wouldn’t let it go,” McNamara said. “He wanted my credit card number to take care of this bill.”
After McNamara informed John he would be contacting the authorities, John simply hung up on him.
“When I called the Sheriff’s Department, they said that this has been happening,” McNamara said. “There’s an active FBI investigation, so I just wanted to get the word out there to not only everybody, but especially to our seniors.”
Ed. Note: This article is a KHTS Feature story based on a recent radio interview with Comfort Keepers Home Care Santa Clarita.
Comfort Keepers Home Care Santa Clarita
23900 Lyons Ave
Santa Clarita, CA 91321
(661) 430-6687
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